Every football player’s dream is to score a goal and win the match. The highest goal scorer gets a special award in World Cup called the Golden Boot. Over the years, many legendary players have won this award. Here are the top contenders this year.

Lionel Messi

It may be Messi’s last chance to win the Golden Boot. He scored 47 goals in this season. He won the European Golden Shoe for the fifth time. He is definitely one of the strongest contenders of the Golden Boot this year.

Thomas Muller

He won the Golden Boot in 2010 only at the age of 20. He lifted the World Cup trophy in Brazil in 2014. He scored 16 goals this season. This year, the fans are expecting some great performances from this talented footballer.

Neymar

Neymar must have dreamt of holding the World Cup trophy last time, but got injured and had to leave the game. This year, his unfulfilled dream may be achieved. At such young age, he has already scored 53 goals. Let’s just hope that he is in good health for this year’s World Cup.

Harry Kane

He is a consistent player. This season he scored 43 goals in just 50 matches. This will be Kane’s first World Cup and he is already a strong contender for the Golden Boot this year.

These players are all set to make history. They have great potentials and they might make their teams proud by scoring a huge number of goals in this World Cup.

The FIFA World Cup is just less than a month away. 32 countries are participating in this biggest event of football this year to be held in Russia. Everyone’s eyes are on the trophy. People have already made predictions about the top teams. Here are the hot favorites of this World Cup.

Germany

Some of the major players of Germany have retired like Philipp Lahm. They got defeated by France in the semi-final of Euro Cup 2016. Still, Germany had great days on international football and they are undoubtedly one of the hot favorites this time.

Brazil

Many Brazilian fans cannot brush off the memory of being crushed by Germany in the 2014 World Cup. Still, the fans have not stopped supporting Brazil. They had two major blows following that World Cup also. They lost against Paraguay in the quarter-final of 2015 Copa America. They had to leave Centenario in 2016 at the group stage. Now the team has some talented young players who are showing hope for the team in this World Cup.

France

Though France couldn’t win the Euro Cup 2016, great things are expected of them in this World Cup. They have the strongest line-up. There are a number of young talented players in the team who may show some outstanding performance on this World Cup.

Spain

Spain has shown some great performances over the years. They had won the World Cup in 2010 and the Euro Cup in 2012. However, they were defeated by Brazil in the Confederations Cup in 2013. In the World Cup qualifiers, they performed well and that’s why it’s one of the favorite teams.

Argentina

Argentina had a rough journey this time. They even had the risk of not being qualified for the World Cup this year. However, they beat Ecuador in Quito and confirmed their participation in the World Cup. Argentina has pulled themselves back and shown that they can handle the pressure. So, they are one of the top favorites now.

So, who is your favorite team? If your team is on this list then there is high chance that your favorite team may win this year’s World Cup. Well, we just have to wait and see.

It’s an apocalypse that Italy didn’t qualify for this year’s World Cup. The incident sent a shockwave throughout the football world. This is the first time since 1958 that the four-time champions Italy couldn’t make it to the World Cup. This time losing to Sweden was worse than losing to North Korea in 1966. Here are the reasons, according to the experts, why Italy didn’t qualify for this year’s World Cup.

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Lack of a long-term plan

The senior official of the team didn’t have a long-term plan. They were only keen to fulfill the clubs’ demands. They took a number of wrong decisions. They didn’t have a good relationship with the senior players of the team like Andrea Barzagli, Daniele De Rossi, and others.

Selection of the wrong coach

Selecting Ventura as the coach was a wrong decision. He has been a minor player among all other coaches in Italy. He was stubborn about the old tactics. He used Lorenzo Insigne sparingly and chose Jorginho instead for the last playoff.

Not considering young talent

There were plenty of new talents that were not utilized properly. Ventura didn’t choose young talents. All the players in the team were over 25 and most of them were over 30 years old. There were lots of young talents like Leonardo Spinazzola, Mattia Caldara, and others. They were not utilized.

It was clear how inexperienced Ventura was. He couldn’t find the right tactics or select the right team. Many of his decisions regarding players were wrong. All these factors led to the terrible loss of Italy to Sweden and thus getting disqualified for the World Cup.